Being that hip hop originated not in the studio, but in a live party atmosphere, it’s sort of sad that most live hip hop sucks nowadays. With the exception of a few acts that have distinguished themselves over the years (Outkast, Kanye West, a cadre of underground acts that cut their teeth on the live show), most live rap shows amount to a terrible sounding and unjustly, yet mercifully, short experience simply not worth the time and/or the money. Yet in a fledgling music industry, where sales of albums simply …

At the age of 26, Donald Glover’s résumé reads like that of a lifetime achievement award: former writer for NBC’s 30 Rock, ensemble cast-member of NBC’s surging Community, award-winning stand-up comedian, sketch comedy writer and performer with the internet sensation Derrick Comedy, and writer and star of the same group’s feature length theatrical release, Mystery Team. And yet, maybe his most impressive feat is the fact that amidst all these projects, Glover still found time to regularly make music under the alias Childish Gambino, releasing a series of underground mix …

Having never seen Degrassi, I don’t know much about Drake, a/k/a Aubrey Graham’s history in portraying Jimmy Brooks on the popular Canadian teenage drama. But there’s no question it represents a weird hip hop origin story. Even more unexpected wasn’t so much the fact that Drake had aspirations to be a rapper; it’s not like that was an unheard of phenomenon in the world of celebrities. The surprising result was that Drake was actually…well, he was really good. So good, he piqued the interest of Lil Wayne, signed a …

If you’ve ever seen Jonathan Levine’s 2008 film The Wackness, it’s both comical and sorta sad how easy it is to create an aesthetic representative of the 1990s, at least in a hip hop sense. The coming of age story followed Luke, a marijuana dealer, as he spent the summer after graduating high school pursuing the girl of his dreams, dealing with his family’s financial troubles, and consulting with his psychiatrist/customer, Dr. Squires, about his growing depression and malaise towards his place in life.
Luke, like most NYC kids in those …

I’ve tried to write the introduction to this review four times, deleting and revising my attempts to introduce the uneducated to Reggie Watts. I give up. It’s impossible to truly explain Reggie Watts in any kind of condensed, summarized version. He stands for so much, while also standing for nothing. He’s hilarious but unfunny in the most intentional and unintentional ways. He’s a genius composer and skilled beatboxer. And nothing about him makes any sense unless you want it to.
With the release of his newest standup/music CD, Why $#!+ So …

In 1991, Public Enemy released a song called “By the Time I Get To Arizona,” an angry, incendiary track in which Chuck D described a fictional assassination of then real-life governor of AZ, Fife Symington, III. The anger originated from AZ’s failure to recognize Martin Luther King, Jr. Day as an official state holiday. In 1990, a referendum supporting the recognition of MLK Day failed, due in no small part to the governor and other legislators’ staunch opposition to the citizen’s ballot initiative.

Almost twenty years later, AZ is in …

Unless you lived under a rock in 2008, you probably heard the term “post-racial” used in reference to President Barack Obama’s candidacy. The term refers to the fact that his being black was for all intents and purposes a non-issue. This, in running for President of a country that only four decades prior was still segregating schools on the grounds of race.
Obama’s viability and eventual success gave credence to a sea-change in our public consciousness, that we had moved past, or beyond the era where race was the first and …

Former music critic, Steve Almond, wrote an op-ed piece over at the Boston Globe this past week, blasting the music criticism industry. He stated, rather eloquently, that good critics–himself not included, by his own admission–could never capture “what it feels like to listen to music. Because listening to music is a collaborative endeavor. Fans don’t just sit there (as critics do) parsing the technical merits of a song. They bring to each song their own emotional needs: their lust and sorrow, their hopes and heartbreak.” When faced with the question …

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published as being written by Ken Lowery. It was, in fact, written by Eugene Ahn, who writes Self-Titled Eponymous every two weeks.
Paste Magazine’s February 2010’s cover story asks the question, “Is Indie Dead?,” a take on John T. Elson’s 1966 Time Magazine cover “Is God Dead?,” an article that raised eyebrows and, in some cases, furor on both sides of the believer/non-believer debate.
The tongue-in-cheek irony of Rachael Maddux’s well-written article is that for many musical fanatics, the indie genre and mentality might as well …

[Author's Note: I write a lot about hip hop and the convergence of race, media, politics, and culture in music, with occasional dalliances into other genres of music]
I was listening to N.W.A. this week and “A Bitch is a Bitch” came on. For those who aren’t familiar, the song is exactly what you’d think it was. It was hailed as a misogynistic nightmare by early ‘90s critics, and the C. Dolores Tuckers of the world began their all-out assault on gangsta rap and its destructive effect on Main Street America. …